It's a peculiarity of the modern day confirmation hearing process that Senators start by awarding themselves each 10 minutes worth of utterly meaningless bloviation. I could only stand it for just over two hours.  It's almost as hard to sit through the banal praise for Alito by Republican committee members as it is to listen to Democrat after Democrat prattle on sanctimoniously about their "deep," "grave," and "profound" concerns regarding constitutional rights sure to be eroded by the potential confirmation of a knuckle-dragger like Alito.

Next time can't we just skip ahead to Phase Two, where the Senatorial bloviating is occasionally interrupted by a question or two designed to elicit some response from the nominee? Better yet, if we wanted to streamline the process as effectively as possible there's an easier solution: pull the plug on the tv cameras. I'm not sure Charles Schumer goes anywhere these days unless there is a television camera present.